For those who aren't familiar with the wonder of yum cha, it's a Southern Chinese type of food in which you and your friends sit down and waiters bring trolleys loaded with a multitude of small dishes – money bags, steamed pork buns, radish cake, deep-fried prawn dumplings and literally dozens of others.
You say yes to whichever ones sound good (possibly more than one plateful, since one serve is usually four items, costing around $5), and eat until you pass out. If you like spring rolls, you'll like most yum cha offerings. There are also restaurants specialising in just dumplings, but I prefer getting a wide variety of dishes – that is the point, after all.
Yum cha (also called dim sum) doesn't always give you food you're used to, or that you can immediately identify, but a yum cha meal has more variety than anything else. If you don't like the bean curd buns, try a pork dumpling. If you don't like the dumplings, hold out for the mango pancakes. Remember to take your time, and to eat a lot. I had about twelve different things, and they were all exquisite. (The problem with taking a photo is that the plates are constantly coming and going, so it's impossible to capture a sense of just how much variety there really was.)
You can try yum cha at
Ginseng Restaurant inside the Hellenic Club in Woden.
